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Art and… General Editor: Chris Townsend The first premise of the Art and… series is that art matters. By this I mean that art is not a futile game played by a few cognoscenti in a vacuum. Rather our assumption in selecting titles for the series is that contemporary art is crucial to our understanding of, and relationship to, the world in which we live. Often the first response to art, especially in the popular press, is to stress its seeming frivolity, its surface shock, rather than trying to draw out the deeper issues at stake within it. Yet art still has the capacity to challenge and to change us. Without pasting up slogans, artists have important things to say about the conditions of our times and, directly or indirectly, they have chosen to take on some of the biggest issues in the world today. In producing this series we have deliberately aligned ‘art’ and those perennial issues such as death and sex which trouble generation after generation. And we have deliberately sought out particular contemporary issues: scientific advances, advertising and celebrity. Books published in the Art and… series will be accessible, but intelligent. Serious and often difficult art need not equate to difficult writing – rather it demands clarity, and this is the second premise of the series. Above all Art and… aims to connect art back to the world. Published and forthcoming: Art and Advertising Joan Gibbons Art and Death Chris Townsend Art and Fame Jean Wainwright Art and Home Nigel Prince Art and Invention Jaime Stapleton Art and Laughter Sheri Klein Art and Obscenity Kerstin Mey Art and Science Siân Ede Art and Sex Gray Watson Art and Surveillance Denna Jones Art and War Laura Brandon Art and Science Siân Ede Published in 2005 by I.B.Tauris & Co Ltd 6 Salem Road, London W2 4BU 175 Fifth Avenue, New York NY 10010 www.ibtauris.com In the United States of America and in Canada distributed by Palgrave Macmillan, a division of St Martin’s Press 175 Fifth Avenue, New York NY 10010 Copyright © Siân Ede, 2005 The right of Siân Ede to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by the author in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved. Except for brief quotations in a review, this book, or any part thereof, may not be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the publisher. ISBN 1 85043 583 9 hardback EAN 978 1 85043 583 9 hardback ISBN 1 85043 584 7 paperback EAN 978 1 85043 584 6 paperback A full CIP record for this book is available from the British Library A full CIP record for this book is available from the Library of Congress Library of Congress catalog card: available Typeset in Agfa Rotis by Steve Tribe, Andover Printed and bound in Great Britain by MPG Books Ltd, Bodmin Contents Acknowledgements vii Introduction: Ambiguities and Singularities 1 I. The Problem with Beauty 1. Everything Is Connected in Life: Beautiful Things in Science 13 2. Disconnections and Asymmetries: The Less than Beautiful in Art 29 II. Evolutionary Perspectives 3. From the Future to the Past: The Evolution of the (Artist’s) Mind 46 4. New Mythologies: Reinventing the Past 59 5. Universal Studios: Scientists Measure Art 79 III. Mind and Body, Body and Mind 6. Sculpted by the World: Art and Some Concepts from Contemporary Consciousness Studies 101 7. New Bodies for Old: The Art and Science of the Body Elective 133 IV. The Fragile Environment and the Future 8. It’s All Over, Johnny: Art and the Fragile Environment 161 9. Reconnections: A Muted Curiosity 179 Notes 197 Select Bibliography 209 Index 212 For my father, Eddie Nicholls, who taught me how to read maps, and my mother, Peggy Nicholls, who managed very well without them Acknowledgements I must warmly thank Mikhael Essayan, Paula Ridley and all my colleagues at the Gulbenkian Foundation who, in the Foundation’s long tradition of risk-taking and pioneering, have allowed me to pursue my interests in the name of work, especially through its grants programme The Arts and Science, though I should stress that this book reflects my own views and not those of the Foundation. I am extremely grateful to many scientists and artists who have patiently explained things and encouraged me further. Some of these are named where appropriate in the endnotes but significant ones include Ken Arnold, Frances Ashcroft, Aosaf Afzal, Paul Bonaventura, A S Byatt, Christine Darby, Richard Deacon, Jayne Anne Eustace, Richard Gregory, Christine Kenyon Jones, Janna Levin, Felicity Luard, Mark Lythgoe, Richard Mankiewicz, Mark Miodownik, Steven Rose, Nicola Triscott and Richard Wentworth. I must particularly thank my editor, Susan Lawson, Steve Tribe and all those who have read earlier drafts and tactfully pointed out fallacies and indiscretions. If I have failed to heed their suggestions the fault is my own. I am especially indebted to my daughters, Kate and Alice Quine, for putting up with my obsessions on a daily basis. … semiotics and ergonomics lasers and caesuras retro-rockets and peripeteia sapphics and turquoise sines and sememes hubris and helium Eliot and entropy enjambment and switchgear quasars and hapax legomena thermodynamics and macrostylistics anti-hero and anti-matter bubble chambers and E.K. Chambers H2O and 8vo genres and genera… Edwin Morgan, Pleasures of a Technological University1 Introduction Ambiguities and Singularities Contemporary scientists often talk about ‘beauty’ and ‘elegance’; artists hardly ever do. Scientists weave incredible stories, invent extraordinary hypotheses and ask difficult questions about the meaning of life. They have insights into the workings of our bodies and minds which challenge the way we construct our identities and selves. They create visual images, models and scenarios that are gruesome, baffling and beguiling. They say and do things that are ethically and politically challenging and shocking. Is science the new art? Contrary to the claims of some in the science community, the public is better informed about contemporary science than it is about contemporary art. Scarcely a news bulletin passes which does not contain the words ‘scientists have discovered that…’ followed up with accessible explanations. All schoolchildren in the West (unless they live in Creationist Kansas) must compulsorily learn the basics of genetics, chemistry and physics. Our television and movie fictions glamorise medicine and forensic science; we relish and revere the slick clinical jargon of ER and Casualty and their crash crises, instant diagnoses and gorily authentic-looking body parts. Even small children can
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